That's flat-out wrong, emojis are communication. Necessity and value can be argued, for example they are pretty much blocked here in HN, yet we still communicat

That's flat-out wrong, emojis are communication. Necessity and value can be argued, for example they are pretty much blocked here in HN, yet we still communicate just fine. There is clear need for them though, as people used emoticons extensively in textual communication on the 90s internet too, and there's usage even before that, centuries back[0]. Text is a very limited representation of human communication, missing the intonation, gestures, facial expressions, volume of speech, and other things too maybe. Emoji can supplement that somewhat, so that's a bit of value that they add. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emoticon#History